


stay as you are

by Ester



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Exhaustion, Fluff, Gen, Idols, jihoon is just a little cat, nap friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:15:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26970496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ester/pseuds/Ester
Summary: He’s not a cuddler, finds that kind of contact stifling and awkward. It makes all his muscles lock up. But Jeonghan is not a cuddler either and somehow that makes all the difference.
Relationships: Lee Jihoon | Woozi/Yoon Jeonghan
Comments: 11
Kudos: 86





	stay as you are

**Author's Note:**

> this is a short thing i posted on twitter a while ago, but i was looking at the bleak boyband bingo board and the square "sleep deprivation is a form of torture" made me think of this again, so i thought i'd pad out the jeonghoon tag a little.

There’s something missing from the track. The melody sounds hollow over the bass, but nothing Jihoon tries to lay in to flesh out the body works. It’s either too shrill or too thumping, too metallic or too cloying. His eyes burn with the bright glare of the screen. The audio waves start to blur together.

The studio is dark around him, clock approaching four in the morning. Jihoon’s the kind of tired, where his muscles keep twitching and jolting at random. He remembers reading that it’s the brain thinking you’re dying and trying to jolt you into action again. He kind of does feel like he’s dying, but only spiritually – the stupid song is leeching away his will to live. It’s both too late and early to call Beomju for advice. He considers, briefly, calling Soonyoung and waking him up, but even if his brain thinks he’s dying, he doesn’t actually want to get murdered.

Jihoon is used to being tired. Enough so that often he no longer feels the constant exhaustion weighing down his chest and humming at the back of his head. Now it swells like nausea, makes him feel like he’s too far back in his own head, looking at the computer through a tunnel. He folds his arms one atop the other on the desk and lays his forehead on them. His face feels hot against the chilled flesh bared by a t-shirt. He counts breaths in groups of five, tells himself that after the next five he’ll get back up, and then gives himself another five, and then another. He loses count and drifts, disjointed thoughts about beat patterns swirling in erratic pulses across his eyes.

The latch on the door releasing snaps him back to his body, to the hard desk pressing against the watch on his wrist.

“Hey.”

Jeonghan’s voice catches in his throat, hoarse from disuse, but Jihoon has spent too long listening to all his members through state-of-the-art headphones to not recognise them from a syllable. He pushes back up and swirls around on his chair. Jeonghan is hovering at the door, one unsure hand poised on the knob. He’s wearing sweats and his hair is a little mussed, pieces stuck to his forehead in a way that would make one of their handlers or Mingyu rush at him on sight. He looks tired, too, but in the middle of comeback preparations, it would be more noteworthy if any of them seemed well-rested.

“Why aren’t you home? It’s four in the morning,” Jihoon tells him. Jeonghan just looks back, eyebrows raised in a challenge. It’s a conversation they could finish wordlessly.

“Stole my line,” Jeonghan says, finally, and slips fully into the room, door snicking shut behind him. “I can’t get the timing right on the start of the first chorus. I keep tripping on the – “ He does the first four counts of the chorus footwork. He doesn’t trip and shrugs. “Well, there, usually.”

Jihoon nods.

“It looked good to me,” he offers. Jeonghan shrugs again, a little awkward, and takes a seat on the couch next to Jihoon’s desk. Jihoon lets him be, for a moment. By now, he knows that Jeonghan needs reassurance, but isn’t always great at accepting it. He’s better with it than he used to be, though. He used to fear Jihoon – treated him with the sort of polite respect that made him feel like a stranger, even though they shared everything but underwear. And possibly, during some very dire times, even underwear, Jihoon thinks and feels a stupid, hysterical snort of laughter bubbling up. He hasn’t slept in twenty-four hours; the cracks are starting to form.

“You’re losing it, huh?” Jeonghan observes wryly. He’s made himself comfortable on the couch, shoes kicked off and legs stretched along the length of the cushions, head pillowed on the armrest closest to the desk. His eyes are at half-mast already and Jihoon knows that if he gives it two minutes, Jeonghan will be out cold. He can’t bring himself to continue work. While Jeonghan can fall asleep anywhere, he also wakes up at the littlest things. And then he whines. It’s no use trying to type or play audio.

“I see what you’re doing,” Jihoon says and turns to scrunch his face at him. The effort is wasted – Jeonghan’s eyes are closed, though he smiles unrepentantly at Jihoon’s words.

“I don’t know what you mean. I’m just here for moral support. To admire an artist at work.”

“Mhm,” Jihoon hums, clicking around on the screen to save his meagre progress and shut the system down.

“Your sofa is very uncomfortable,” Jeonghan says, “And it’s cold in here.”

Jihoon clears up stray pieces of paper, sweeps up a few empty cans into the bag of recyclables. Waits for Jeonghan to get to his point.

“You should come have a snuggle.”

If it were anyone else, anyone at all, this is where Jihoon would scoff or laugh and wave it off. He’s not a cuddler, finds that kind of contact stifling and awkward. It makes all his muscles lock up. But Jeonghan is not a cuddler either and somehow that makes all the difference. Jihoon shuffles to the sofa and thinks about the cat his neighbour had when he was a kid. It would duck and evade everyone who tried to pet it or pick it up, but sometimes, when Jihoon just sat out in the yard, minding his own business, it would leap over the low fence between the houses and approach him, whiskers twitching with curiosity.

He tries not to make parallels, as he snags a blanket off the backrest, lays down on the sofa and gingerly rests his head on Jeonghan’s arm, flung out seemingly casually, yet perfectly positioned.

Jeonghan smells like salt mixed with the same laundry detergent they buy in bulk for the dorm. The sleeve of his sky-blue hoodie is worn thin and feels soft against Jihoon’s cheek, as he turns on his left side to fit better on the cushion and clumsily spreads the too-small blanket over both of their legs. When Jeonghan breathes out through his nose, Jihoon can just barely feel the airflow against his forehead. Jeonghan doesn’t press close or pull him in. He doesn’t even acknowledge his presence beyond the little upturn of his lip that he’s not quick enough to hide. He just lets Jihoon exist next to him, exists next to him in return. With every one of Jeonghan’s exhales, Jihoon feels himself relax a little bit more, sink deeper into the couch cushion.

The rest will be there in a few hours. It’s almost light outside. It makes no sense for them to go all the way back to the dorms just to leave again after an hour. The members at the dorm can get their morning routines out of the way quicker if there are fewer people present to hog the bathroom. And if he got up now, Jeonghan would make a terrible fuss. Jihoon lists these facts out one by one and lets himself be.

Morning traffic is already picking up outside - the noise of it carries in a low, familiar hum all the way up the building. Jihoon tugs the blanket better over Jeonghan’s ribcage and sleeps through sunrise.

**Author's Note:**

> nap friends!!! i'm yilinges on twitter, come say hi, if you'd like.


End file.
